New Criticism

This third edition of Hans Bertens’ bestselling book is an essential guide to the often confusing and complicated world of literary theory. Exploring a broad range of topics from Marxist and feminist criticism to postmodernism and new historicism, Literary Theory: The Basics covers contemporary topics including: reception theory and reader response theory; the new criticism of postmodernism; the ‘after theory’ debate; post-humanism, biopolitics and animal studies; and aesthetics.

GOTH is an entertaining and engaging historical memoir, and a journey through Goth music and culture, exploring creative giants like The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Joy Division, and many more great bands that offered a place of refuge for the misfits of the ‘80s and ever since. Written by Lol Tolhurst, co-founder of The Cure, this book offers a riveting retrospective of the genre’s iconic movers and shakers, infused with stories from Tolhurst’s personal trove of memories.

Here are poems about things that you may never have thought about before. You'll be introduced to jellyfish stew, a bouncing mouse, a ridiculous dog, and a boneless chicken. You'll learn why you shouldn't argue with a shark, eat a dinosaur, or have an alligator for a pet. You'll meet the world's worst singer and the greatest video game player in history. You'll even find an invitation to a dragon's birthday party....

Here is the epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967 - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Dolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde - and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood and America forever.

From one of the leading critics of leftist orientations comes a study of the thinkers who have most influenced the attitudes of the New Left. Beginning with a ruthless analysis of New Leftism and concluding with a critique of the key strands in its thinking, Roger Scruton conducts a reappraisal of such major left-wing thinkers as E. P. Thompson, Ronald Dworkin, R. D. Laing, Jurgen Habermas, Gyorgy Lukacs, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Žižek, Ralph Milliband, and Eric Hobsbawm. Scruton delivers a critique of modern left-wing thinking.

John Shelby Spong, best-selling author and popular proponent of a modern, scholarly, and authentic Christianity, argues that this last gospel to be written was misinterpreted by the framers of the fourth-century creeds to be a literal account of the life of Jesus when in fact it is a literary, interpretive retelling of the events in Jesus' life through the medium of fictional characters, from Nicodemus and Lazarus to the "Beloved Disciple."

In 1970, Asbury Park, New Jersey, was ripped apart by race riots that left the once-proud beach town an hour away from Manhattan smoldering, suffering and left for dead. Four years later, a few miles down the coast in Seaside Heights, two bouncers, Jack Roig and Butch Pielka, tired of the daily grind, dreamt of owning their own place. Under-prepared and minimally funded, the two bought the first bar they considered, in a city where no one wanted to be, without setting one foot in the place. They named it the Stone Pony.

Bordertown: a city on the Border between the human world and the elfin realm. A place where neither magic nor technology can be counted on, where elf and human kids run away to find themselves…. Here are 13 interconnected stories and eight poems - all new work by some of today's best urban fantasy, fantasy, and slipstream writers.

Picking up where Under the Big Black Sun left off, More Fun in the New World explores the years 1982 to 1987, covering the dizzying pinnacle of LA's punk rock movement as its stars took to the national - and often international - stage. Detailing the eventual splintering of punk into various sub-genres, the second volume of John Doe and Tom DeSavia's west coast punk history portrays the rich cultural diversity of the movement and its characters, the legacy of the scene, how it affected other art forms, and ultimately influenced mainstream pop culture.

Martin Torgoff details the rise of early drug culture in America by weaving together the disparate elements that formed this new segment of the American fabric. Channeling his decades of writing experience, Torgoff connects the birth of jazz in New Orleans, the first drug laws, Louis Armstrong, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, swing, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, the Savoy Ballroom, Charlie Parker, the birth of bebop, the rise of the Beat Generation, and the launch of heroin in Harlem.

In a dim clearing off a county road in Kentucky sits a sagging outdoor stage buried in moss and dead leaves. It used to be the centerpiece of carnival-like Sunday afternoons where local guitarists, fiddlers and mandolin players hammered out old mountain ballads and legends from the dawn of country music performed their classic hits. Most of the musicians who showed up have long since passed, but Nashville stars Ricky Skaggs and Marty Stuart survive. Highways and Heartaches takes listeners on the rural circuit Skaggs and Stuart traveled.

Samuel Charters has been studying and writing about New Orleans music for more than 50 years. A Trumpet around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz is the first book to tell the entire story of a century of jazz in New Orleans. Although there is still controversy over the racial origins and cultural sources of New Orleans jazz, Charters provides a balanced assessment of the role played by all three of the city's musical lineages - African American, white, and Creole - in jazz's formative years.

Bordertown: a city on the Border between the human world and the elfin realm. A place where neither magic nor technology can be counted on, where elf and human kids run away to find themselves. The Way from our world to the Border has been blocked for 13 long years. Now the Way is open once again—and Bordertown welcomes a new set of seekers and dreamers, misfits and makers, to taste life on the Border.

In A New America, Tommy Mottola explores the societal and cultural impact the Latino community and its music has had on America by sharing behind-the-scenes stories from his own life and his connection to the Latin sound throughout the decades - from his initial fascination with Latin music which started with Puente, to the mainstream success of Ritchie Valens, to the groove-laden guitar wizardry of Carlos Santana. >But A New America is more than a story about music and musicians. It is the story of a culture that continues to grow and influence America.

Rhythm & blues emerged from the African American community in the late 1940s to become the driving force in American popular music over the next half-century. Although sometimes called "doo-wop", "soul", "funk", "urban contemporary", or "hip-hop", R&B is actually an umbrella category that includes all of these styles and genres. It is in fact a modern-day incarnation of a musical tradition that stretches back to 19th-century America, and even further to African beginnings.

In 1971, Newsweek heralded The Last Picture Show as "the most impressive work by a young American director since Citizen Kane." Indeed, few filmmakers rivaled Peter Bogdanovich's popularity over the next decade. Riding the success of What's Up, Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973), Bogdanovich became a bona fide celebrity, making regular appearances in his own movie trailers, occasionally hosting late-night television shows, and publicly advocating for mentors John Ford and Howard Hawks.

La nueva música clásica es una exploración personal y profunda sobre el rock: la revolución musical que comenzó en los años cincuenta con el rock ’n’ roll, le dio la vuelta al mundo en los sesenta montada en los hombros de los Beatles y transformó para siempre la música popular con las experimentaciones del movimiento hippie, más los que le siguieron.

In Search of a Beautiful Freedom brings together the best work from Farah Jasmine Griffin's rich forays on music, Black feminism, literature, the crises of Hurricane Katrina and COVID-19, and the Black artists she esteems. She moves from evoking the haunting strength of Odetta and the rise of soprano popular singers in the 1970s to the forging of a Black women's literary renaissance and the politics of Malcolm X through the lens of Black feminism.

Beyond Bombshells analyzes the cultural importance of strong women in a variety of current media forms. Action heroines are now more popular in movies, comic books, television, and literature than they have ever been. Their spectacular presence represents shifting ideas about female agency, power, and sexuality. This book explores how action heroines reveal and reconfigure perceptions about how and why women are capable of physically dominating roles in modern fiction.

Theatre has long been an art form of subterfuge and concealment. Working in the Wings: New Perspectives on Theatre History and Labor, edited by Elizabeth A. Osborne and Christine Woodworth, brings attention to what goes on behind-the-scenes, challenging and revising our understanding of work, theatre, and history.